A slightly shortened version of this article was published
in the Times Higher Education Supplement's special section on
Consciousness linked to the Tucson II conference "Toward a
Science of Consciousness", Apr. 5th. 1996, page (v).

Those who recognise that significant discoveries in science
are very often prompted by observations that do not fit
expectations will find a stimulating challenge in accumulating
evidence that it is possible to elicit psychic functioning in
experiments with ordinary volunteers acting as subjects. Even
more convincing results occur with specially selected subjects.

In one type of experiment, a "target" photograph or
video segment is randomly chosen out of a set of four
possibilities. A "sender" attempts to transmit it
mentally and a "receiver" is then asked to provide an
account either verbally or in writing of what she imagines it
might be. She is then shown the four possibilities, and selects
the one she thinks best matches her perception. By chance alone,
a correct match is expected on average one time in four, whereas
the experiments typically show the considerably higher success
rate of around one in three.

The recent declassification of the US government's psychical
research programme (experiments on "remote viewing",
similar to the type just described except that it used
independent judges to assess the matches rather than having the
subjects judge themselves) has permitted a comparison to be made
of the results of this programme with those described in the open
literature. Despite the different judging procedure, similar
success rates were found. In addition, many of the governmental
experiments used gifted subjects. The success rate was then even
higher, typically over forty percent. The few experiments in the
open literature that used gifted subjects found similar success
rates.

In the past, critics have attempted to discredit positive
results in psychical research on grounds of lack of
repeatability. But, as anyone with a training in statistics
knows, even where an influence exists, an isolated experiment
with an insufficient number of trials may not demonstrate a
statistically significant effect. Accordingly, without a more
sophisticated analysis, "failure to reproduce an
effect" does not demonstrate its absence. Suppose, for
example, psychic abilities, in line with the results already
described, increase the chances of a successful match from 1/4 to
1/3. Then (according to the accepted statistical theories), an
experiment with 30 trials, which has been typical of these
experiments, would have less than a 17% chance of achieving a
result of statistical significance. The more recent larger
experiments still utilise only about 100 trials, and have only
about a 57% chance of achieving statistical significance.

Detailed analysis of the complete collection of experiments on
this type of phenomenon shows that what holds, despite changes in
equipment, experimenter, subjects, judges, targets and
laboratories, is far greater consistency with the 1 in 3 success
rate already mentioned than with the 1 in 4 chance expectation
rate. Such consistency is the hallmark of a genuine effect, and
this, together with the very low probability of the overall
success rate observed occurring by chance, argues strongly for
the phenomena being real and not artifactual.

Reexamination of other types of psychical investigations
reveals that they too achieved replicable effects, which went
largely unappreciated because of a poor understanding of
statistics. For instance, an analysis of experiments in
precognitive card guessing and related "forced-choice"
experiments, published by Honorton and Ferrari in the Journal
of Parapsychology, found that gifted subjects were able to
achieve consistently about a 27% success rate when 25% was
expected by chance. Similar U.S. government experiments have been
revealed to have achieved the same 27% success rate over
thousands of trials. If chance alone were the explanation for
these results, it would be truly remarkable to achieve a 27%
success rate over thousands of trials, and it would be even more
remarkable to see identical results in the government work. For
further details about the recent evidence, including both a
favourable and a skeptical assessment of the U.S. government
experiments, consult the Journal of Scientific Exploration,
Vol. 10(1), or http://www-stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/
on the Internet.

Strong statistical results are of course meaningless if
experiments are not properly conducted. Debunkers of
parapsychology are fond of showcasing the very few experiments
that have been found to have serious problems. But that ignores
the fact that the vast majority of experiments were done using
excellent protocols, paying close attention to potential subtle
cues, using well-tested randomisation devices and so on. For the
past decade the U.S. government experiments were overseen by a
very high-level scientific committee, consisting of respected
academics from a variety of disciplines, all of whom were
required to critique and approve the protocols in advance. There
have been no explanations forthcoming that allow an honest
observer to dismiss the growing collection of consistent results.

What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic
functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem
mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena
of the past which science has now happily incorporated within its
scope. What ideas might be relevant in the context of suitably
extending science to take these phenomena into account? Two such
concepts are those of the observer, and non-locality. The
observer forces his way into modern science because the equations
of quantum physics, if taken literally, imply a universe that is
constantly splitting into separate branches, only one of which
corresponds to our perceived reality. A process of
"decoherence" has been invoked to stop two branches
interfering with each other, but this still does not answer the
question of why our experience is of one particular branch and
not any other. Perhaps, despite the unpopularity of the idea, the
experiencers of the reality are also the selectors.

This idea perhaps makes sense in the light of theories that
presuppose that quantum theory is not the ultimate theory of
nature, but involves (in ways that in some versions of the idea
can be made mathematically precise) the manifestations of a
deeper "subquantum domain". In just the same way that a
surf rider can make use of random waves to travel effortlessly
along, a psychic may be able to direct random energy at the
subquantum level for her own purposes. Some accounts of the
subquantum level involve action at a distance, which fits in well
with some purported psychic abilities.

These proposals are extremely speculative. What needs to be
done, in any event, is to integrate mental phenomena more
thoroughly into the framework of science (including the quantum
level) than is presently the case. The research of Lawrence
LeShan (as described in his book The Medium, the Mystic and
the Physicist), where interviews with psychics disclosed
that they were aware of a "hierarchy of meaningful
interconnections", perhaps provides a hint of what might be
involved. Science has a poor handle on ideas such as meaningful
interconnections since they are alien to its usual ways of
thinking. Perhaps it will need to overcome its current abhorrence
of such concepts in order to arrive at the truth.

* * * * * * * * * *

Jessica Utts is professor of statistics, University of
California, Davis, and was one of two experts commissioned by the
CIA to review the two-decade U.S. government psychic research
programme in the Summer of 1995. She has recently published a
book, Seeing Through Statistics, Duxbury Press, 1996,
designed to improve understanding of statistical studies. Brian
Josephson, Nobel Laureate, is professor of physics, University of
Cambridge, and heads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at the
Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.